Team Seacats

Yes, I’m STILL working on fencing.  In my defense, I’ve had a lot of other work get in the way and slow progress…and I’ve gone sailing a time or two in the last several weeks.  However, I’m still making steady progress on the fencing and resisting the urge to start working on other areas of the garage until the exterior is complete.  Once I get the fencing done, it’s on to wiring the new structure and once the county inspections are done things should start flying as I contract out much of the finishing work.  I did absorb and evening distraction by installing a new touch screen navigation and stereo Kenwood unit in my truck that I found at a great deal.  I decided to pull the truck into the garage for the first time and do the installation work there.  I was, and am still, shocked at how much space is in the garage!  My Chevy truck is the 2nd longest version Silverado they make  – note that the garage door is closed behind the truck in the picture below!  I’m going to have a lot of fun in this space when it’s done.

Roomy

OK, onto the projects accomplished in the last couple of weeks… I am still welding on the gates periodically but they’re almost complete.   With some help from my buddy Mark, we machined the blocks from 1.5″ square steel bar.  One gate now has both hinge blocks welded in place.  I finally feel like I’m getting the hang of this welding stuff and am starting to get a feel for the right temperature and wire feed speed – I’m pretty proud of the last several beads I’ve laid on these blocks and the reinforcing plates.  I’m ready to build my next trailer now!

Machined Hinge Block

Block Welded to Gate - prior to tie-in plate

Upper Hinge Welded and Reinforced

One last thing I need to sort out on the gates is the posts.  They’ll have the hinge pins mounted (on all-thread going through the posts)  and they’ll have plates to attach the wood fence to.  Looking at the curve of the driveway, I decided a curved fence would look really cool but it took some experimenting to figure out how to build it and I needed to figure out how everything was going to fit to the big corner posts so I can weld on the proper fittings prior to galvanizing.  This past Sunday, I hammered in and concreted three galvanized posts for the curved fencing and purchased some 7/16″ pressure treated marine plywood and ripped it into 4″ strips x 8′ long.  I had initially thought these would be flexible enough to bend to the radius to match the drive, stack them three wide, and glue and screw them together to make two solid horizontal arms to attach pickets to.   I broke the first strip of plywood I tried to bend and decided I needed a plan B.  I washed down a beer while staring at the problem came up with a plan B and a plan C.  Plan B was to wet the plywood and see if it gets more flexible.  Plan C would be to kerf cut the plywood – or kerf cut some 1×4″ pressure treated planks and find a way to make that curve.  I took one strip of the plywood and hosed it down before covering it with wet towels.  It sat like that overnight.  I got home Monday night and started clamping the wet plywood to the posts – it worked but the wood was pretty stressed and I decided to let it sit for a day and dry a little to get an idea for how much it would relax in that position.  Meanwhile, I stacked the other strips of ply and wetted them down in a similar fashion.  Tonight I removed the clamps and the wood took to the curve pretty well holding pretty close to it’s shape.  So I started building the first of two horizontal wood braces by stacking the plywood three strips wide, staggering the joints, and putting in 2 to 4 screws every 8″.  Because I broke the first piece, I’m a little short on finishing it with plywood.  Since the ends are straight, I’ll scarf in some pressure treated 2×4′s to complete the horizontal braces.   It looks like it’s going to work great.  Tomorrow I hope to get started on the 2nd one after this one dries a little.

Beginning the stacked curve

1st Strip Almost Complete

1st Strip Complete

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” – Pablo Picasso

The lesson for the last couple of weeks is welding.  I’ve dabbled with it periodically in the past – I once took two wrecked $300 cars (one in the front, one in the back) and made one good one out of them…but that was a long time ago and the welding, though it held up well, probably would not have achieved a passing grade in any welding school.  From time to time I’ve needed to weld something (usually on a trailer) and always wanted a little wire-feed unit.  I found a reason to buy one after the driveway “Plan A” was changed because a concrete truck crushed a large portion of my existing drive and the resulting repair and new drive ended up 16 feet wide instead of the 12 feet I had planned on.  I had already purchased gates for a 12′ wide driveway.  Since it would be silly to put a post in the driveway for the gate creating 1/3 of a driveway “to nowhere”, I decided to sell the gates I bought and by/create something to fit.  After looking around it quickly became apparent that I could buy a welder, a nice auto-darkening helmet, and all the steel and wood I needed to make the gates for less than 25% of the cost of paying someone to build them.   I set out to learn to weld and spent several days reading and practicing.  I quickly drew up two 8′ gates and had the steel the next day and started fabricating and welding.  At current state, both gates and gussets are assembled but I still need to weld in the hinge blocks and mounting plates to attach the latching/locking hardware.  I really hope to have that finished this weekend so I can send it out to be galvanized next week.  It should cost me around $100 for the hot-dip galvanizing which is much easier, though slightly more expensive, than me painting them and they should maintain a great cosmetic appearance for at least 18 years.  Gunther (pictured below after he crammed himself in my recliner with me and I fell asleep … he’s feeling a bit neglected lately) is desperate to have a yard in which he can be let loose and expend energy during the day and these gates are all that we lack.  I’m going as fast as I can!

Enjoying the ease of parking boats on the flat drive

Welding in a tight spot

Cutting - Griding...the smell of burning metal...

Zzzzzzzz

матрациI don’t know who coined that phrase…but it was probably a guy with a lot of land he already owned…with a lot of dirt…that he didn’t have to buy.  I’ll have you know that dirt is NOT cheap!  I’m up to $1,200 just in two loads of fill dirt, one load of crush and run, and one load of top soil and I think I need one more load of top soil!  Dirt is not cheap unless you happen to already own a bunch.  The next time anyone hears me use that phrase, it will be oozing with sarcasm and used in reference to something expensive and probably made from carbon fiber.

I’ve been working my tail off between work, 2nd work (neglected whilst building the Great Retaining Wall of Greenville), and the garage project.  I actually snuck in a weekend sailing in there too – but that was needed for my sanity.  I’ve finally found a few minutes to edit the website – but I’ve got to get back to designing some t-shirts and proofs.

I’ve been working out the design of the fence in the back yard.  I’m not impressed with the quality of the prebuilt fence panels from the box stores but they’re considerably less expensive than just the lumber would cost to build something similar myself.   I’m also reinforcing them substantially with more treated lumber so hopefully they’ll stand up for a while.   This fence is 6 feet tall and about 52 feet long.  It took me some figuring to sort out setting the EMT conduit on the backside of the wall before they poured concrete but I’m really happy with the result.  Even though I did the neighborly thing of facing the good looking side of the fence toward my neighbor it still looks pretty good from my side.  This will keep the traffic from a busy street from looking through my neighbor’s front yard at my boats and into my garage should the door be open….and shield my neighbors from all the boats and some of the RV.  If I wanted to get really special, I could screw pickets to this side too making both sides attractive – but that’s not in the budget for the time being (or necessary…with the RV and the boats, the lack of beauty on this side of the fence won’t be very noticeable).

I received some occasional help from my neighbor’s niece and nephews between them making fun of their “English” neighbor for not speaking much Spanish and jokingly trying to convince me I just said a “bad word”.  I can pick out enough Spanish to keep the conversation honest…but I do appreciate how effortlessly they can switch languages and find myself a little jealous!  How they interact and explain concepts (and my construction methods) to each other is really interesting.  Their Dads and Uncle (Simon – my neighbor) are all exceptionally detail oriented handy people and we appreciate each other thoroughly.  Part of my fence plan is to install a gate so I can more effortlessly join them for their incredible Saturday night friend and family gatherings around their backyard grill.

The driveway, pad, and apron ended up being 340 square feet more than I had anticipated (or so they say – I haven’t measured yet)…but I’m really happy with the result and really glad I built that retaining wall and leveled up that corner of the yard…even though it was as “cheap as dirt” {spoken with excessive sarcasm}.

the wall

some of my help (the neighbors niece and nephew Ashley and Kevin)

neighbor's nephew, Renaldo, keeping things steady

Fence almost complete...the gates on this side will be something else.

OH!  and the structure is pretty much complete now.  All they lack are gutters.  This picture is from a few days ago just before they finished the siding.  I’m loving my Overhead Door Co. garage doors.  Tri-layer construction with an R12.7 insulation value.  The garage will be pretty easy to keep warm in the winter.

For the time being, that first step out of the upstairs is a doozy!  They can’t build the stairs until the concrete pad is poured next to the driveway so they can establish the bottom elevation.  They couldn’t start the grading for concrete until I finished the retaining wall…so we’re moving forward soon for completion of the exterior of the structure and property.

from the driveway side

viewed from the back yard

It’s been a little while since my last update – I spent a week working in Missouri and I finally began a plan of action to better the elevation difference in the corner of the yard.  There wasn’t much time as the grading people would soon be waiting for me to complete my plan to mitigate the low elevation of the corner of the yard.  After measuring everything I determined that I had a 37″ difference between the floor of my new garage and the corner of the yard that is 25 feet away.  That’s just too much slope and would not only look funny, but would make it extremely difficult to pull a boat and trailer up manually (1,000 lb combined).   I decided to make the difference about 10″ to 12″ for adequate water drainage and started evaluating methods.   My builder showed very little interest in participating in the wall or sharing an opinion on the topic (I’m not sure if it was liability, the lack of a comfort zone, or that he was afraid the price might scare me).  I could have poured a concrete wall but that would take a lot of forms and supports (which I don’t have) so I would have to hire that out and would be expensive.  I could have used some of the extra foundation block but that would have required an advanced footer.  I settled on stackable 16″ foundation wall blocks and got to work on the wall.  I rented a mini excavator and again with the priceless help of several great friends (Tim, David, Mark, and Chris), we got to work.  I ended up with a wall with 5 courses at it’s deepest spot (30″), 47 feet long, and weighing 8,000 lbs with 1,600 lbs of concrete under it.  It took a few loads to the hardware store to transport all the block but I was smart and used the trailer that the excavator came on to transport two 2,400 pallets at a time (hoping that the same box store that rented me the trailer and excavator wouldn’t notice!).   We knocked it out (including purchasing and unloading material) in one full day and two long evenings.

I’ll share with you my plans for the privacy fence there a little later – I had to do some real inventing to sort out a way to support the wall that would be sturdy, live long, and handsome while not taking away from my real estate any more than absolutely necessary.

this mini excavator wasn't able to pull that pole straight up (weak)

There was a lot of sweat dripped on that wall. Here, I talk through the physics with David about how his height and mass is important and why he needs to continue being the person driving the remaining posts.

practically done